INTO THE STORM
Directed by: Steven Quale
Starring: Richard Armitage (as Gary Morris), Sarah Wayne Callies (as Allison Stone), Max Deacon (as Donnie Morris), Nathan Kress (as Trey Morris), Matt Walsh (as Pete), Alycia Debnam-Carey (as Kaitlyn), Arlen Escarpeta (as Daryl), Jeremy Sumpter (as Jacob), Kyle Davis (as Donk), and Jon Reep (as Reevis)
Plot: In the span of just a few hours, the city of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of the most furious twisters they’ve ever seen. The entire town is at the mercy of the erratic and deadly cyclones, even as storm trackers predict the worst is yet to come. Most people seek shelter, while others run toward the vortex, testing how far a storm chaser will go for that once-in-a-lifetime shot. Told through the eyes and lenses of professional storm chasers, thrill-seeking amateurs, and courageous townspeople, “Into the Storm” throws you directly into the eye of the storm to experience Mother Nature at her most extreme. (www.intothestormmvoie.com)
Our team here at TheYoungFolks.com was recently given the chance to sit down with the director and cast of this weekend’s natural disaster film. Instead of reporting these interviews in the standard question and answer format, I decided to do something different with it. As a heads up, this was my first time doing interviews. Much like that other big “first time”- you know what I’m talking about – the experience was exciting and scary and ‘do-we-make-eye-contact’ awkward, sometimes all at once. That being said, let’s jump in.
Part 1: The Idiot and the Daredevil (Their words, not mine)
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The first group of cast members to walk into the room were Jon Reep and Kyle Davis, the idiot and the daredevil respectively. Which really is a fitting title as the two play stereotypical country hicks chasing after this deadly storm in an attempt to get famous on YouTube. Davis himself started the interview by asking where we (the other interviewers and I) were all from. Keeping in mind that this was my first time, I answered with my hometown. I’d only realized I’d made a fool of myself when the rest of the press responded with their websites. So there was some trouble getting started. Yes, there is a parallel there.
Q: Have either of you ever been through a storm of this caliber?
Jon: Yeah, actually, I’ve been through a couple hurricanes. I’m from North Carolina originally and we get our fair share of hurricanes coming through there. I think I’ve been through three of them. And one time, our parking lot was a river. To this date, my roommate still has no idea where his car is.
*Cue laugh break*
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Kyle: Well, I grew up in LA so I went through a lot of earthquakes and in Arizona I went through a lot of monsoons and floods. And as for the earthquakes, I’ve been through a lot of the big ones, Yucca Valley, Northridge. Some of our house actually broke apart in the Yucca Valley one and Northridge left my sister’s apartment basically in shambles. I remember going to school while it was happening and the ground started to shake and smashed my car against the side (of the median) and it was pretty crazy. But no tornados though.
Well, that’s alright Kyle, I’d say the natural disasters you’ve experienced have been sufficiently traumatizing for this lifetime. And as for mentioning monsoons in Arizona, I did a bit of a mental double take there. After doing some research, it turns out that shifting winds and desert air pressure cause that state to get some seriously hormonal storms.
From there, we moved onto having gigantic CGI tornados as co-stars.
Q: So when you were making this movie, did they do that thing where they hold a little blue ball in the sky and say that’s where you’re looking?
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Jon: They did for some people, but not for us.
Kyle: They’d basically say…
Jon: “That’s where the tornado is,” and they’d point to the window of a building.
Yes, they do finish each other’s sentences. Watch out Hans and Anna, you’ve got some competition.
Kyle: We didn’t really do any green screen. Technology has progressed a lot. You don’t really need a lot of green screen stuff. But Steve (the director) would tell us, “Alright, this is going to be the big tornado, this is going to be the little tornado.” Steve actually created this thing called a prefib, which is like an animation for you.
Don’t know what a prefib is? Don’t feel bad; no one in the room did either.
Q: A pre-what?
Kyle: A prefib. I don’t really know the spelling.
Jon: Don’t quote us on this. It could be a total lie.
Kyle: But he created like a five minute long animation of what the tornado would be so we could get it in our minds and it wouldn’t just be like, “Oh, yeah, a tornado over there.”
And once the answer is out, it’s a race to see which press can talk the quickest and the loudest to get the next question in. Just picture us as the cast of The Hunger Games sprinting towards the cornucopia. It’s the older press who play like the ruthless district tributes who have been training their whole lives for this. Me on the other hand, I was Peeta…
Q: What do you think the appeal is to a movie like this?
Jon: I mean, people really enjoy watching death and destruction. If you go on YouTube or you Google something and find a video of something terrible happening, you don’t really want to watch it but you do, and then you end up watching more that come up.
Kyle: That’s why people call things a train wreck. You can’t not watch a train wreck.
Jon: And there’s always gonna be natural disasters in our world. This is real stuff that happens. It’s not like the zombie apocalypse where you’re like “Oh, that’s cute, but that will never happen.” This shit happens.
Speaking of shit, let’s move on to how Kyle Davis ended up swallowing loads of cat shit.
Q: Did anyone get hurt filming this movie?
Kyle: I didn’t get hurt per se, but I did get sick. We were shooting the scene where the quad jumps the flaming pool, that was the stunt guy of course, but once he was already in the water, they put me in there. And then they started just dumping buckets of water on me. And this area we were in, I don’t know if the fucking lady was a cat hoarder but there was tons of cat shit on the property. So they were just picking up buckets of this stuff and dumping it on my face and I’m getting it all in my mouth and for the next five days I was sick as a dog in my hotel room.
That’s right. Next time something shitty happen to you on the job, remember that you didn’t have to literally drink shit. Literally. Drink. Shit.
And I’ll wrap up this portion of the interviews with Davis and Reep’s take on their characters as compared to themselves. Here’s where that semi-insulting title plays in.
Me: So both Donk and Reep are serious risk takers – was there any point during filming where you were like, “Man, what are these guys doing?”
Jon: Yeah, well, they’re idiots. They don’t think things through. They’re just trying to get famous on YouTube. And they’re just trying to get laid.
*Cue laughter*
Note: Neither of their characters ever mentioned getting laid. This is a PG-13 flick after all.
Jon: And then we see these professional tornado chasers come through town and so we think, “Well, let’s chase them,” so we call ourselves Tornado Hunterz. With a Z.
Kyle: We don’t think about the danger at all, we think about the girl.
Jon: In real life, he’s a daredevil. (Referring to Davis, of course).
Kyle: I was a skateboarder and I was kind of a bad kid. I’d get in lots of trouble jumping off things, doing flips off cliffs, so when I saw this character I thought, “Oh, that’s sweet,” but I need a stunt double now cause I’m old.
Jon: And I’m a comedian and I’ve got a couple viral videos on YouTube that have millions of hits. There’s one where I’m playing a drunk cop who pulls a guy over and teaches him how to pass a sobriety test because he’s just drunk and bored and it’s got like 2 million hits because people think it’s real. So I’ve got a little bit of experience in this kind of stuff but this guy is a daredevil. He’s got dead body parts inside of him.
And for your viewing pleasure, I’ll link that video mentioned above right here:
I chuckled. Maybe you will too.
Davis: I’ve had spinal chord surgery, ACL surgery, and three eye surgeries because I’m blind in my right eye. I was beat up by seven guys when I was 17. I had my face smashed in and I’m blind in my left eye now. That’s how I actually became an actor.
[tps_footer]Click NEXT for our interview with The Stormchasers[/tps_footer]
[tps_title]Part 2: The Stormchasers[/tps_title]
The next group of cast-members to join us were Matt Walsh, Jeremy Sumpter, and Arlen Escarpeta, who are all part of the storm chasing team. As it turns out, this round of cast had its own daredevil as well.
Q: Have any of you even been in a storm like the one in this movie?
Jeremy: When I was in first grade, a tornado tore through my school while we were in class in Kentucky. That was my experience with tornados.
Q: And were you traumatized for the rest of your life?
Jeremy: No. I’m fascinated by the weather. When I was growing up, Twister was my favorite movie. I watched it all the time. The weather channel was on all the time. The weatherman was my hero, so that was a cool experience for me.
I’m sorry, but you’ve got to be one insane little kid to think being in a tornado is awesome. When I was in 1st grade, a thunderstorm could make me crap my pants. And I just wrote that on the internet.
And now I have to take a moment to warn you: this next question involves some serious spoilers. Did you get that? SPOILERS AHEAD! If you’re one of those people who get pissy about having certain scenes ruined for you, then skip this question entirely.
Me: So both of you guys died in some pretty epic scenes. What was it like watching that happen to your characters?
Matt: To sit down and watch that, it was mind-blowing. Like all these guys, you’re acting with pieces that aren’t there so you don’t see this carrying out in your head. But you trust him (Steve, the director) to see it fully executed with that incredible soundtrack and that intense visual and all the special effects coming together. It’s pretty mind-blowing. It’s incredible to see that and you can’t believe that it worked.
Jeremy: I never read the script so thanks for blowing it for me.
We all laughed that off at first. But Jeremy kept going. He started arguing details with Matt over how much they’d seen and honestly, I couldn’t quite hear it over the voice in my head shouting, “YOU RUINED THAT DEATH FOR HIM YOU ASSHOLE!”
He sold it. He really sold it. And it was only after I apologized heavily that he revealed it was all a joke. One point for you, Jeremy. But honestly, joke’s on you. I already looked like an idiot once today.
ATTENTION: SPOILERS OVER. We’ve reentered the safety zone guys.
Now, let’s take a moment to appreciate something that screwed up way more than me. This short paragraph is dedicated to the fancy schmancy storm chasing vehicle, Titus. Which, it turn out, worked about as well as a 1985 Toyota Corolla with over 300,000 miles. And you thought the movie life was glamorous.
So next I had to ask about the filming scenario. I couldn’t be the only one wondering if any of what the cast filmed (onscreen) ended up in the movie.
Me: So you guys were “filming” a lot of the movie. Did any of that actually end up in the film?
Arlen: You know, Steve told me there was a scene in the movie but he won’t tell me what it is. So we can’t claim it as our own. And we also got to go to this camera class for a day. We got to learn how to use a steady cam. You had these little cups of water and you had to run with it and tilt to the left and tilt to the right. And I took it very, very seriously. So the day when (Matt) is talking about the Titus (their storm chasing vehicle), you’ll never notice this but I’m sitting there and I’m total cameraman. I’m not an actor at all and I was just like, “I want this to be in the movie.”
And then an interviewer brought it back to the boring sort of questions. But Matt Walsh came in with the save.
Q: Can any of you talk about the director?
Matt: As long as Steve had his cocaine he was a good director.
*Laughter please*
Matt: That helped him visualize what was in his head.
Arlen: By cocaine you mean Coke 0.
Matt: Oh, I’m sorry, did I say cocaine?
Yes, Matt. Yes, you did. And it was hilarious.
As for the next question, Jeremy Sumpter got a chance to flex his comedy muscles in answering a question that could have otherwise been rather depressing.
Q: And what do you think the appeal is to a movie like this? Something that’s real?
Jeremy: We’ve got some really sexy tornados. There’s one big giant fat one at the end who’s just a real b-word.
Obviously he meant babirusa, a large breed of pig inhabiting the Indonesian wild.
Matt: Casting the tornados was the longest part of this process.
Jeremy: One of them is like so hot she’s on fire. And one of them doesn’t like to show her face much so she just kind of jumps around at you. And there are these Victoria Secret models who are just sort of twisting around in the background, too. But no, this movie’s got everything. It’s a big blockbuster tornado movie.
If you’re keeping track, that makes Jeremy Sumpter: 2, Interviewers: 0. Ding, ding, ding, we have our winner. And let’s wrap these guys up.
Q: And what are you guys doing next?
Matt: I’m in a show called Veep.
Me: Season 4?
Matt: Season 4.
And I guess I was feeling ballsy here.
Me: I’ll see you there.
And then I got a smile and finger point from Matt Walsh. My day was sufficiently made.
[tps_footer]Click NEXT for our interview with Nathan Cress, Max Deacon, and Alycia Debnam-Carey[/tps_footer]
[tps_title]Part 3: The Most Genuine People You’ll Ever Meet[/tps_title]
The third set of interviews brought us Nathan Cress, Max Deacon, and Alycia Debnam-Carey; the brothers and the crush with a cause. And, no joke, they were probably the most genuine people I’ve ever met. I didn’t know what to expect going into these interviews but what I didn’t expect was any of the cast to be truly interested in and completely devoted to the questions we were asking. These guys were.
At first, Nathan walks in by himself. And if you’ve ever seen iCarly, this guy is exactly as fun and silly as you’d expect him to be. Alycia got held up entering the room and he called out to her in a hilariously shrill tone. But this is an interview after all, so let’s get to the questions.
For some reason, an interviewer felt the need to ask if Max’s British accent is in fact a British accent. Yes, it is. And as for Alycia; no, she is not British. Her Australian accent means she’s Australian. But that’s not all they asked.
Q: And the American accent was no problem then?
Max: Well, you know, you do them a lot. But we had a dialect coach who worked with me and Leesha and Richard every day and we all thought she was a character and hugely talented. She’d get scrappy with us if we were off.
*Cue me questioning why everything sounds so much cooler in a British accent*
Q: Now who helped you with your American accent? (Referring to Nathan of course. Because he doesn’t have an accent. It’s called sarcasm).
Nathan: My mom and my dad happened to birth me here.
And that marks the spot for just the right amount of accent talk for one interview. Or a bit too much. I think we’re all ready to move on.
Q: With the handheld camera, vlogging is a big thing now. Are you all into watching that on YouTube?
You see, I was sitting next to Nathan Kress, a.k.a Freddie Benson, when this question was asked. If you’ve ever seen iCarly, you’d know vlogging played into that show quite a bit. And, as awkward as I am, I subconsciously whispered iCarly at this point in the interview. His expression read ‘weirded out,’ but he incorporated it into his answer. So I’ll take that as a win.
Nathan: I lucked out because for the last six years before that I had been doing a kid’s TV show where my job was to tote around a camera the whole time. So for me, it was actually very organic. And not only that but matching that to what the camera guys were doing because that’s very difficult. You have to shoot everything the exact same way they do.
Max: It’s quite a different way to shoot a film like this. Usually when you’re on set, you’re supposed to ignore the camera, the cameras aren’t people. But here, the cameras are people and in some ways it’s very freeing because there are no marks, but then sometimes you have to turn and look straight down the lens which is a very alien feeling and your like, “Oh, this feels wrong.” So that was kind of an adjustment.
And in the second-long gap after this answer, Peeta struck.
Me: Max and Alycia, how difficult was it to film that pit scene? It was just so intense to watch I thought you guys did an amazing job.
Max: Thank you so much.
Alycia: We appreciate that.
Max: It was very sexy.
Alycia: We had that dirty glam look going on.
*Laughter*
The two played off each other very well.
Max: It was cool, we did it over five nights, which is a really short time because it was such an easy set up and because it was just me, Alycia, and a camera man down in this pit set up on a soundstage. We started it and they just filled the pit with more water and more water and more water ‘til that final fun scene.
Alycia: I think we first imagined we’d be doing it over a longer period of time, but because it was in the one place it was suddenly quick succession over a bunch of nights. It was difficult because it is one of the quieter moments of the whole film; there’s a lot of spectacle going around but this really brings you into two characters. And so that was sort of hard, we wanted to do that justice, too. So to do that, the water’s slowly rising up to your mouth and you’re kind of struggling to breathe at some point.
Max: It was always kind of nerve-wracking going into the scene, but that setting was both difficult and kind of galvanizing. Having water rise on you and being right on the edge of drowning the whole time, it gives you a sense of urgency and intimacy. They put a lid on us. We couldn’t see the rest of the crew. And towards the end of the scene I’d look over at Alycia and I’d just see a pair of lips above the water.
Well Max, that’s not a bad pair of lips to stare at.
I think it’s about time in this interview to mention a name drop that had gone down earlier and will play in again later on.
Q: You said James Cameron had another contribution to the movie, what was that?
Max: Yeah, there’s one scene where I’m being saved from the water. My head almost came out of the structure when he was coming in after me once I’d almost drowned. So they added in a layer of water so that as he arrives I’m (totally) submerged.
Max: (As per James’ recommendation). At the end, Steve comes in dragging a kiddie pool into this room and he was like, “Do you mind just putting your head under the water and making some noises?” And he wanted to make it realistic so he actually uttered the words I’d never thought I’d hear a director say, he said, “We don’t want to water board him but…” and I was like, “Yeah, not that” and he replied, “No no no not that.” But yeah, we had to make the sounds realistic.
Me: At the end, do you think Donnie (Max’s character) finally got the date with his long time crush (Alycia’s character)?
Max: Oh, definitely.
Nathan: They’re getting married. How could they not?
Max: We originally had that in there.
Dang you, whoever cut that out. The guy nearly died for her and we don’t get to see his happy ending. Not that kind of happy ending. Oh, you know what I mean.
And then once our time with them was up, THEY thanked US. Seriously, they were THE kindest souls. And I’m clearly CAPS happy.
[tps_footer]Click NEXT for our interview with Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies & Steven Quale[/tps_footer]
[tps_title]Part 4: A Director, a Dwarf, and a Zombie Slayer[/tps_title]
Now, depending on your personal preferences, I may have saved the best for last; the much mentioned Steven Quale and the two main stars, Richard Armitage and Sarah Wayne Callies. Or, as they’re known from their bigger works, the Dwarf and the Zombie Slayer.
Since we finished the last set of interviews with talk about romance, let’s start this round out the same way.
Q: I thought this was the perfect storm movie; the only thing missing was I wanted you two (Richard and Sarah) to get together.
Steve: Well, it’s interesting because we always felt that would be implied and we felt that if we hit you over the head with it, it might have taken a little bit of the truth away from the film. Because only in movies do people just meet each other and fall in love.
Rich: And the realness of it is, can you think of a moment in that movie where they could think about their own selfish emotions?
Sarah: I do think these are two people who’ll think quite a bit about each other, if for no other reason than this is the guy who saved my life, this is the woman who got me to my son. I kind of like that it didn’t end with a sort of Disney ending.
Rich: They’re fused together by what’s happened to them.
Q: What’s the appeal to the realness of this movie?
Sarah: I think there’s something to say about the power of proxy. When we’re watching this footage, we’re watching our fellow Americans’ worst hours of their lives. It’s fascinating and we can’t look away. It’s voyeuristic and it’s intrusive. (Our characters) are not real people. This didn’t happen. So you can approach the movie by proxy. It’s the distance of being able to say it’s not real even though these exact circumstances do happen to people.
Rich: We watch these films because we live in the isolation of our own lives.
These two, you guys. These two. It was like, every time they spoke, I was standing at the edge of the deepest sea and their voices we’re answering from the beyond. Oh, and there’s a golden sunset in there too.
Steve: For me, it’s not about the spectacle, but about the human element; watching how they interact with each other and learning what’s important with life, family, and friends.
At this time, the Career Tributes (God, I hope you’ve all read or seen The Hunger Games) had been ferociously asking questions. And poor little Peeta hadn’t yet been hardened enough to be so rude. But that’s alright, Katniss comes swooping in to save him.
Translation: And this is the part where Sarah stops the interview to point me out and ask for my question. Which was really touching because even though there were about three others who hadn’t gotten the chance to speak, I’d already been talked over about five times.
Bless you, Sara Wayne Callies.
Me: You’ve played some really incredible mother figures with this, The Walking Dead, and your upcoming film (The Other Side of the Door). Is that something you’re specifically looking for in films?
Sarah: I started playing moms at the time I became a mom and what I love about Allyson is she’s such a strong woman. And, like me, she is constantly feeling guilt for not being with her family or feeling she’s compromising herself professionally. Every working mom I know is pulled between those two poles and I’d never gotten a chance to do that so I thought it was done really beautifully here.
Well Sarah, I think that answer was done beautifully.
And once Sarah had spoken up for me, other interviewers were getting spoken up for. #StandUpForInterviewers2014
Q: How’d you find the balance between professional footage and handheld shots?
Steve: Well, not to sound arrogant, but I like to call it a first person narrative film as opposed to a found footage narrative. And my motivation for that are these professional storm chasers who know how to handle a camera. So as a result we have cinematic angles.
And then we get back into that James Cameron name drop. It all has to do with Richard Armitage’s character taking away and then returning a knife to one of his sons (Nathan Kress).
Steve: A while back, Jim Cameron showed me the movie Titanic and at the very end of the movie, where the old woman throws a diamond, originally it was a group of half a dozen people and they had some comedy and all that and I felt it wasn’t as powerful. So I suggested, “What if you just had old Rose by herself?” So he reshot some stuff and that’s the end of Titanic. And when I showed him our film he really loved it but he said the knife is a great motif for Trey (the son) becoming a man that completes his journey.
So there you have it. Their friendship has come full circle. And people close to James Cameron call him Jim. You’re welcome.
That’s it. It’s a wrap. I assume right about now you’re all winding down from the high of spending time with these stars. Until next time, guys.
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